By far, the best thing about being in lab everyday, all day is the sense of continuity. During the school year, I log about four hours a week and on rare occasions, a little extra. I’m finding out that’s not enough to get the true sense of continuity of the lab. Seeing projects and long procedures go from beginning to finish.

This summer, from mid May-July, I will be conducting an ethnographic public health study in Blantyre, Malawi. The study will examine how maternal capacities—the individual level psycho-social, biologic and organizational characteristics of mothers—influence women’s hygiene and infant and young child feeding practices. I have designed the study over the past year during two independent studies with my research advisor, Professor Scott Ickes, who will carry out a concurrent study Bundibugyo, Uganda. This work is foundational to Dr. Ickes’ broader work in child nutrition interventions in Africa, and the findings from this research will inform a future NIH grant proposal and ongoing research studies in these two field sites.

Leitner et al. (2008) describe five main aspects of spatiality that should be accounted for in any analysis of a social movement or instance contentious politics (e.g. resistance): place, scale, networks, positionality and mobility. In keeping with their wishes to avoid anointing a master frame, I shall take this opportunity to describe how each of these concepts have appeared in relation to the case and in particular, my guiding research question: how does the materiality of of coal fired power plants affect the spatial distribution of resistance?